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Friday, 24 August 2007

A friend of the IPKat who, for her sins, is now working in-house in the IT industry, has asked for readers' recommendations as to the name of a good book, article, webpage or indeed anything else that gives good guidance to a young, not very techie lawyer, who is about to embark upon her first ever review of a computer software licence. How does one conduct the review? What should she be looking out for? How can she spot the things that aren't there and what might happen if she doesn't ...?

Right: review is not just a matter of keeping things in sight (artwork by creativity expert Bruce van Patter)

Please email your suggestions here. They will be published on this weblog for the benefit of everyone.

Although it was published last year, Innovation Markets And Competition Analysis: EU Competition Law and US Antitrust Law has only recently come to the IPKat's attention. It's written by Swedish lawyer Marcus Glader, an Associate in the Brussels (Belgium) office of internationally-focused law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. The publisher is the increasingly active Edward Elgar.

Unsurprisingly, Marcus Glader's practice as well as his academic interests focus on international competition and antitrust law. He has published various works in this area and spoken at several seminars and conferences. His experience also includes other fields of EU law, such as State Aid and other EU regulatory frameworks.

"The pace and scope of technological change is increasing, but some innovative technologies take years before they give rise to saleable products. Before they do, there is competition in ideas and research, but the ideas cannot be market tested, because there are no products or services to offer to consumers. Competition law, in Europe and the USA, cannot be applied to competition in research for innovation as if it was competition between products. Completely different problems arise and a completely different approach is needed. This book, the first on innovation markets, shows how this new approach has been used by competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic in a wide variety of cases. It analyses in depth and detail the comparative law and economics of the problems arising from the different stages of these markets. It considers how far conclusions can be drawn about the future and comes to interesting, practical and sensible conclusions. And it avoids both unjustified scepticism and exaggerated enthusiasm about the theories of innovation markets".

What the IPKat says:

"This book, which belongs to EE's New Horizons in Competition Law and Economics series - under the auspices of series editor Steve Anderman - examines both the legal standards for the protection of competition in the innovation process and their underlying economic rationale, from the perspective of both European competition law and American antitrust law. At first sight, I thought: aha, this is another "book of the thesis". But it is very more than that, because of the author's own professional experiences have enriched a text that, remarkably, does not even seem to have been threatened by the usual formulaic structure of some comparative law theses ("write all you know about A"; "write all you know about B"; "list the similarities and the differences"). The book is also enhanced by the author's willingness to express his opinions rather that leave it to an exercise in "on the one hand ... on the other hand".

The book is driven more by the author's sensivity to innovation markets and the issues raised by competition than by a love of legal rules, which is what makes it so interesting. This is sensible, since markets - with their real and imagined economic effects - come first and the law, slowly dragging its heels, pursues it at some distance. Dr Glader's is not a convenient reference work for the practitioner who, faced with an issue arising from, say, the Tech Transfer Block Exemption Regulation, wants a quick answer: but it is a work that, certainly from the European perspective, repays thoughtful reading".